


Spiderbabies

by Not_You



Series: Eight-Armed Hugs [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Animal Instincts, Animalistic, Clint Feels, Dom/sub Undertones, Eggs, F/M, Feral Behavior, Fisting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Natasha Feels, Nesting, Pregnancy, Sexual Exhaustion, Spiders, clint gets a horrible scare but it's okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 14:32:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3491870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_You/pseuds/Not_You
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Natasha decide to try and reproduce, unsure exactly how it will work between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Natasha gets broody every summer. It's just a basic spider urge and she has never expected to do anything about it. But it's been a long time of her and Clint together, and even a long time of the team together and the world really is a little safer now. She starts to think about having a child, or a clutch of eggs or whatever her strange, hybrid physiology is capable of. The thought has crossed her mind before, and has does so more and more often since she met Clint. A male so trustworthy and fit is a strong inducement, and the current relative calm turns her vague desire into a definite craving, exacerbated by her summer mating phase.

When she finds herself sweaty and dreamy and unfocused in late March, she realizes that this year will be worse than ever. By the time May comes, she has had four separate crying fits related to wanting babies. She hides them from the team and from Clint as much as he can, but he wouldn't be her precious mate to be loved forever and never eaten if he didn't know her too well to be easily deceived. She's tucked up in a ventilation duct and weeping quietly when a light sound and a gentle, soothing vibration makes its way to her. Clint is tapping on the metal, and she smiles through her tears, even if she's annoyed at being caught. He climbs up the shaft to join her, and smiles softly.

"Hey," he says, stroking her hair.

"Hey," she whispers, and lets him hold her, leaning into his shoulder and relaxing into his heartbeat.

"That's better," he says after a long silence. "What's wrong, spiderbabe?"

She chuckles at the pet name, still sniffling a little. "I'd say it's nothing, but I won't insult your intelligence."

"Thanks."

"Have you ever thought about children, Clint?"

"With you?" he says, so softly it's hard to hear even this close. "Yeah."

They talk for a while longer, and agree that it can't be this year, if it's even physically possible at all. It still hurts, but now that Natasha's baby fever is out in the open, Clint can help. First, of course, he cooks her several lavish feasts and wanders around the tower for weeks in a happy daze, black and blue with bite-marks. Natasha still has an IUD, the one the Red Room gave her replaced by SHIELD. She has never known if it's really necessary or not, but at least she has a uterus to put one in, which is a hopeful sign.

Clint does all the usual things for her, drumming and dancing and working his slick, hot hands into her, and by late summer she's nearly satisfied. There are still little fits of dreaminess and of depression, but now she's together enough to actually take steps toward her goal, such as going to Medical to get her IUD removed. They also do some more blood-work and a thorough pelvic exam, telling her that everything is in order. She keeps her plans to herself, just saying that she wants to give her system a break. Since the first one was put in when she was fourteen, the medical staff agree that this is probably a good idea.

Heading into autumn, Natasha finds herself bringing strange things into her web. Body pillows and rolls of gauze and tennis balls, and it actually dawns on Clint, first.

"Tasha," he says, shifting a tangled wad of gauze with a ball inside it, "I think you need something to use for an egg sac."

He gets her a net bag of eight soccer balls, and it's very nearly perfect. The individual lumps are a bit too big, but the texture of the net and the weight of the balls are comforting, as is the size of the whole package. It's nice to cuddle with, and she finds herself carefully turning it and humming to it and making sure it's not too hot or too cold. She even sprinkles water on it when the netting feels too dry, and Clint plays along with all of it. He guards the bag for her when she's not around, and when she comes back early to check on them, she finds Clint sitting in her web, the bag snugged in against his side as he reads an article on competitive archery aloud.

"See, Wilson?" he says, "That's why Daddy has to do so many stretches."

"Wilson?" Natasha asks, touched and amused as she goes over to join them, settling in on the other side of the bag and cuddling it.

"Hey, it's what's printed on them," he says, and smiles at her, setting his magazine aside to hug the bag as well, wrapping his arm over hers and resting his cheek on the ball closest to his face. "Our pwecious baby soccer balls, Wilson One, Wilson Two, Wilson Three, Wilson Four, Wilson Five, Wilson Six, Wilson Seven, and Wilson Eight."

Natasha hums, hugging the bag tightly and then turning and shifting the balls without even realizing it. "Yes."

Clint really does treat the bag as though it's full of spherical babies. Natasha knows that part of him is just enjoying how ridiculous the whole situation is, cooing syrupy baby talk to their little Wilsons to make Tony laugh and making Steve fetch and carry for him because "I've only just gotten Wilson to sleep," but there's a real tenderness to the way he moves and places the bag, and Natasha catches him pressing a kiss to the netting when there's no one around to laugh.

Natasha struggles to remember her own early development as she and Clint slowly buy up the kinds of things normal human babies need. Bottles and a bassinet and toys, soft and warm baby blankets and diapers and other soft and safe objects that make Natasha feel kind of weird. She knows her first toys were real weapons, but she was just little, not a squishy mammal.

"I'm afraid," she says to Clint as they survey the room that will be their nursery if this works out.

"Me too," he says, putting an arm around her. "Which part right now?"

"I'm afraid I won't understand it. That it will come out all human."

"You'll be its mother. That should help. And I'm all human, I can translate."

It's easily said, but Natasha's earliest memories are very strange. She remembers a haze of something silky, and how it made her feel safe. There were other girls in the silk, but she doesn't know how early that was. Just that eventually she found her way out or was taken out, and then it was time to play with weapons, and to run and bite and climb. If her baby is all human, it will come out squalling and helpless, and she's not sure that she ever was.

Still, when her cycle comes again, they don't use condoms and don't even try to resist her urge to pull Clint's hand into her, leaving warm slick deep inside. Even when they do get a call in midsummer, the others take care of it, leaving Clint and Natasha tangled together in her web. They barely even hear the others telling them not to worry about it, Clint bucking and gasping as Natasha bites him over and over.

All summer long Natasha feels more arachnid than ever, and Clint is exhausted from trying to keep up with her. She makes him come until he's dry and aching, and then holds him tight, arms and legs wrapped around him, her teeth resting on his rabbiting pulse. Sometimes he sobs quietly, and the helpless, high-pitched sounds just make her bite him harder. Clint may be only human, but he's strong, and he endures all summer. He looks pretty haggard by August, but he says he doesn't regret one goddamn thing, and after about three days spent doing nothing but sleeping and eating, he's pretty much recovered. 

Once Natasha is sure she hasn't broken her mate, it's time to check the results. She knows Clint would want to be with her, but some solitary, predatory mood comes over her, and she goes incognito to a normal store like a normal person and buys a pregnancy test. She does not shoplift it, despite how much easier and more anonymous it would be. She pays with legal tender and then uses the public restroom in another store entirely to take the test. Watching the second line fade in, she isn't quite sure how to feel.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint tries not to show just how happy the news makes him, and they keep it from the team until a second store test comes up positive along with a SHIELD blood test. The general mood is one of guarded optimism, because no one has any idea what the hell is going to happen. The first few ultrasounds look normal, but they get more and more strange as time goes by. There's a definite fetal heartbeat, whatever else is going on, but the images make no sense. They're jumbled and rounded and full of odd lines as well as the suggestion of some kind of real fetal growth, and Natasha tries not to worry about it and just to eat all the meat she suddenly craves. She's always carnivorous, but now she hardly even thinks of eating anything else, and she quits going into the field altogether. 

Clint tries not to hover around her too much, but he can't seem to help it. Usually Natasha is glad to have him around, but today she's ferociously irritable. She barely manages to kiss him for luck before he leaves, and sits there watching the team on a monitor and trying to get some paperwork done. The cramps start then, but first she's too busy watching to notice. She rides them out for ten minutes before it dawns on her that she may be going into premature labor. The thought doesn't devastate her like it should. She's starting to feel very, very spidery. Many things don't matter, and instinct takes care of the rest. She finds a nice, dark place and strips without thinking about it, crouching there and pushing, even though it has only been twenty-three weeks. For some reason she's not worried. 

Around the bright pain of pushing and the deeper pains of each contraction, she feels something shifting inside her. It's plural, articulate and almost finger-like. This should worry her, but she can feel all of it. It's like moving two fingers inside her other clenched hand. Whatever is happening, and whatever is inside her, she owns it all. When white fluid starts to drip onto the floor with only a little blood, she finds herself making careful circles, creating a mat of what must be spider silk as it dries.

By the time Clint arrives Natasha is pretty content, odd as it seems. She's still cramping and it still hurts, but the sight of the mat beneath her has quieted any remaining fears. She knows what to do now, and is actually mad at Clint when he pokes his head into the closet and yells in horrified dismay.

"Shut up," she growls, distracted.

"Oh my god, Tasha, you're at twenty-three weeks! We can't-- we need help!"

The 'we' touches her, but when he reaches out in some blind mammalian attempt to help or comfort, she bats him away. He's crying, but she's too busy to do anything about that. There's a sudden and small gush of something that looks black. At first she thinks it's more blood, but then smiles to see that it's some kind of pigment. It seeps into the mat, tinting it blue. Somewhere a million miles away Clint is talking to JARVIS and running at top speed, presumably to fetch Bruce. Natasha ignores it, and by the time they come racing back, she's pushing out the third of what must be eggs, milky, blue-tinted spheres a bit bigger than a slow-pitch softball. 

Bruce opens the closet door, and she hisses ferociously at him. He blinks, and then shuts it again. Outside she can hear Clint's frantic voice, and Bruce's calmer one easing him down. She feels a pang for her poor mate, and then a completely physical one distracts her, and she concentrates on forcing out number five, which is a tiny bit bigger than the others. Once it finally goes it's like a cork from a bottle, and three more eggs spill out after it. She rests for a while, and then that alien-familiar inner movement begins again. No one disturbs her as she carefully covers her pile of eggs in layers of blue-tinted silk. It takes a while, and she's very tired when she's done, but rolls her eggs up into a nice, smooth ball, and bares her teeth and raises her arms in what junior agents call 'Romanov's Scary Face' and which she now knows is an instinctive threat display when the door opens a crack.

"Just me, sweetheart," Clint croons, and taps a soothing pattern on the floor. She shivers, and then smiles, reaching out for him. She's not surprised at the way he drops to his knees and clings to her, burying his face in her hair and mumbling about how scared he had been and how he's sorry for interrupting and he loves her and their spiderbabies so, so fucking much. He tears up a little again, and she rocks him a little and makes soothing human noises at him until he can bear to pull away enough to look at their egg sac. It really is a lot like their bag of Wilsons (now enshrined in Clint's closet, wrapped in a blanket and tucked comfortably into a box) but much smoother, about two-thirds the size, and perfectly round.

"I like the blue," Clint says at last, hands still resting on the warm silk.

"I wasn't expecting it," Natasha says, "but I do too."

It's another spider instinct not to let anyone or anything near her precious eggs, but after she gets cleaned up and has a long nap, she lets the team see it, provided they come in quietly, one at a time, and don't turn on the main light. They have to get their look by her little bedside lamp, but none of them seem to mind. Bruce and Tony are both fascinated by the science of the thing, Thor has seen stranger, and Steve has put aside all misgivings and questions just to be happy.

"It's real pretty, Natasha," he says, "and it looks healthy, too."

New ultrasounds reveal eight tiny fetal forms in eight bubbles. If anything, they seem post-mature, already looking like miniature human newborns. They seem to be asleep, though, floating in the dark of the egg sac with their big eyes closed. Clint is fascinated, and lingers over the image as long as he can before the technician takes a look at Natasha herself. Gynecologists have long noticed some odd tissue on either side of her g-spot, and today the tech shows them little finger-like growths that seem to be shrinking even as they watch.

A set of internal spinnerets would explain a lot, and what had been noted over a decade before as 'an idiosyncratic gland' on the rear wall of her vagina is presumably where the silk came from.

"It all seems to be going away, though," the tech says, "like the way softened joints firm up again after delivery."

Even with the limits of medical knowledge, it's good to find herself and her brood devoid of apparent physical problems. There are only estimates on how long the rest of the gestation will be, but their Wilsons have actually been good practice. They keep the sac with them all the time, guarding it and turning it so none of the eggs spend too much time getting squashed on the bottom. There's a narrow temperature and humidity range for the eggs, and Natasha knows it the way she knew to how to form the sac and to not panic at the feeling of her spinnerets. Clint can't know it the same way, but he's a very motivated student, in addition to being smart enough for Natasha to mate with in the first place.

After another three months of care, Clint and Natasha sharing their precious burden between them every safe place they go, the eggs finally hatch. In a stroke of truly wonderful luck, they're both present to see it. She has to shake Clint awake, but they're both there when the first of their eight bubbles pops. They sit spellbound as their little spiderlings crawl free of their eggs. The babies are bright-eyed and alert, looking about three years old. They're still very small, though, and they make no move to escape the sac. Instead they devour the torn fragments of egg skin, and then stare out at their parents, big eyes very serious. Natasha laughs and cries, remembering the silk and knowing that these babies will be just like her, only loved from the beginning.


	3. Chapter 3

Even for babies, the spiderlings have big fat bellies, and while Natasha is pretty sure they would make their way out of the sac if they were hungry, they get Bruce to come and have a look. The babies giggle as he pokes at them through the silk, apparently assuming that this is all some kind of game with Uncle Bruce. He smiles.

"Well, as I keep reminding you people, I'm not actually certified for this, and the silk is in the way, but I'm pretty sure they're slowly absorbing their yolks, just like real spiderlings."

Clint laughs, touching the sac and grinning from ear to ear as one of the babies presses its hands to the sac and then retreats, giggling. All of them are giggly, it turns out. A ridiculous happy little bag of babies. All girls, as Tony's careful ultrasound of the sac with equipment of his own design reveals.

"Still gonna name 'em all Wilson?" he asks Clint, who rolls his eyes before going back to cooing at the baby currently stretching the side of the sac with her chubby little hands.

"I thought it would maybe be funny to give 'em all Wilson for a middle name, but in the end it's still too corporate." The baby squeals happily (but very quietly) and rolls away into the pile of her sisters. They're packed in together, but none of them seem to mind.

Tony laughs, stowing the ultrasound gear. "You wound me."

"Superhero mitigates corporate whore," Clint tells him without looking up. "After all, it works for Batman."

Tony bursts out laughing at that, and the babies press against the silk nearest him, big-eyed and fascinated. Natasha just hugs the sac where she's holding it as best she can in her lap. It's getting heavier as its occupants grow, and she has the feeling that soon they'll split the glacier-blue wall and be skittering all over the tower. She's not looking forward to diapering this many, but hugs without silk in the way will be nice. Despite that, she's in no hurry. Things have been coming back to her lately. She knows she was taken from the silk, that she and her sisters didn't get to decide when they joined the world. She wants her little not-Wilsons to have options.

The girls make their choice about ten days later. Unlike the actual hatching, their parents miss most of this. They haven't managed to put themselves out of a job yet, so they're sleeping off a fight with what Tony refers to as a roided-up super-chicken. It's actually an alien lifeform stolen and dropped onto Japan to cause chaos, but it does look sort of like a chicken, and all of them are battered and exhausted from chasing it around and trying to keep it away from civilians. They've just gotten home and are sleeping like the dead at four p.m. when something makes Natasha's honed instincts wake her up. Clint is almost as good as she is, and he's still out, almost but not quite snoring. Through that sound she hears a quiet pattering, and sits up to see a tiny spiderling making her way across the floor. She looks up at Natasha, and giggles.

The sac has been too big to sleep in the web with them for a while, and is now slowly deflating in its nest of blankets on the floor beside it. Three of the girls are still in it, and the other four are unaccounted for until she registers the two patting at each other in some arcane, wordless toddler game under the web. 

Clint is awake by now, and he mumbles, "Where's Wilson Eight?"

"Closet," Natasha says. She's not sure how she knows, until she registers a faint, sweet, babyish scent. She gets up and pads over to the closet, cooing, "found you," when she opens it and finds a baby on the floor, chewing on her own toes.

"You stuck," Clint asks the other three, soft and sweet, "or just taking your time?" He's answered with a giggle, and one leaps out to grab onto his face, the other two right behind her. Clint flops onto his back, laughing as they chew on him with teeth like seed pearls. A moment later he yelps, and Natasha looks over to see him tapping a baby on the nose. "Little too hard, sweetheart. You need some real food?" He and Natasha both scoop up their nearest daughter to feel her belly. They're smaller, less round and not as squishy. "Yeah," Clint says, "I think you're done with your first helping. Any ideas on what they need, Tasha?"

"Meat," she says, and the baby in her arms chirps, "Meeet!" eyes alight. Clint laughs, and they gather up four babies each. All of them can walk, but they're about as hungry for contact as for meat, clinging to their parents on the way to the kitchen.

It takes a little bit of experimentation, but it turns out that spiderbabies like nearly-raw steak and eggs sunny-side up. Clint is a bit disturbed by this until Natasha points out that commercially-available hen's eggs are unfertilized anyway. "Besides," she adds, cracking more into the skillet for her little ones, "spiders are vicious cannibals."

"And I love you anyway," Clint says, kissing her cheek and then laughing as one of the girls starts to climb up his leg.

While Natasha had rigidly controlled who got to see the eggs and how, there's no controlling her curious spiderbabies. They introduce themselves to the rest of the team without any regard for all the near heart attacks they cause. Natasha turns her back just long enough to do the dishes, and in the time it takes for Clint to step into the bathroom, take a leak and come back, three of the girls have vanished. One is just clambering into the vents, another is headed for the elevator, and they're getting truly worried about the third when they hear Steve scream at the top of his lungs. JARVIS assures them that he's all right, and that he's on his way up to their floor, bearing Miss Wilson with him.

"We're not really calling them that, Jarvis," Clint says, "but I guess it'll work for the moment." He answers the door when Steve knocks, greeted by a paper-white and dripping wet super-soldier.

"Clint," he says, "she's adorable, but I react badly to unexpected visitors in the shower."

The baby giggles, sucking on her fingers, and Clint takes her from Steve. "Thanks for not squashing her."

Once everyone else is awake, they call a team meeting for everyone to meet the girls. Tony and Bruce are fascinated by the genetic implications of all this, and let the girls crawl all over them as they test their blinking reflexes, measure their tiny feet, and coo nonsense at them. Thor just smiles sadly, the way he does remembering better times on Asgard.

"You remind me of Sleipnir, little one," he tells one of the girls, holding her under the arms as she kicks and giggles. He really must be an experienced uncle, because when she suddenly starts peeing, he hardly gets any on himself or even the upholstery, putting her on the coffee table where it will be easy to wipe up. Tony laughs at him and then has to dodge a similar attack with less success. They manage to rush the others to the nearest bath tub before they get the bright idea to test their own excretory systems. Clint is laughing so hard he can barely stand up, and the girls haven't stopped giggling at any point. 

Natasha sighs. "I see that I have a very silly brood." She pokes Clint. "I blame you."

Now that the girls are out and about, Natasha is faced with a lot of human concerns. Names and birth certificates and clothes and all the rest of it. At least the girls are so intelligent that Natasha has them toilet-trained inside of a week, using little detachable seat platforms of their doting Uncle Tony's design and manufacture. Pepper and SHIELD are working on the legal things, and Clint and Natasha construct a group web for the babies to nap in while their parents bicker about names and shop for onesies that won't compromise their climbing abilities. Steve and Thor are mostly confined to adoring the little creatures and helping in the Sisyphean task of corralling them, but are also invaluable extra hands during bath time and meals. Tony gets too distracted trying to study them to be much good at this, and Bruce is only a little better. Still, Natasha's daughters will know a lot more about who and what they are, so she can't really begrudge such loving research.


End file.
